Is gun violence actually rising?

The Los Angeles Times’ Kurtis Lee declares that it can’t really understand while accidental gunshot deaths are falling while gun violence is increasing. On its face, this seems like a reasonable question, but given the LA Times’ history of reporting on guns is about as accurate as a penalty kick with a torn ACL, we have to delve a bit deeper.

The opening sentence waves a red flag, calling for the bulls to run at the specter of well-publicized shootings in Las Vegas, Baltimore, and Sutherland Springs. These are “clearly” part of a trend to higher gun crime. As for accidental deaths, Lee claims, following the Washington Post, that one reason accidents are decreasing is that fewer homes have guns. But the Pew Research Center says that gun ownership is rising! And if we look further, ABC/Washington Post polling shows a very stable 43+% rate of homes with guns over the last 18 years.

To those who know and handle guns regularly, the large public shootings are events that speak to the evil of the perpetrators, not the instrument of destruction. But this talisman is supposed to keep us from understanding that over decades there are two trends that cannot be mistaken.

First, the overall gun homicide rate in the US is in a steady decline. Second, gun ownership in the US is steadily rising. The National Instant Check system run by the Federal Government shows a doubling of gun purchases from 2008 to 2015. Concealed carry permits have increased from 2.7 million in 1999 to over 14.5 million in 2016.

We can admit that for two years gun homicides have had an upturn. But when the Left presents a single answer for a complicated problem, we can be pretty certain that they are wrong. (Ditto for the Right!) There are multiple factors that can lead to a rise in gun deaths. Yes, Las Vegas is one. But it pales in comparison to Chicago and Baltimore. And we should consider common features there.

Those two metro areas have been under unified Democrat rule for decades. As a result, their poverty rates are notably higher than many other cities. This is known to breed crime. Next, these areas share features with a couple of other places: San Bernardino and the Pulse Night Club. They are legally “gun-free zones.” The list could be much longer, but virtually every public mass firearm murder is in a “gun-free zone.”

Just ask why grandmothers in Chicago want guns. Are they target shooters in withdrawal? No! They want to be able to protect their grandkids from the gangs that rule the streets. Yes, when seconds matter, the police are only minutes away. If they come at all. Since Ferguson, community policing has largely disappeared, so now Chicago plants a resident every eighteen hours.

We must dive just a bit deeper into this cesspool.

69% of US counties have no more than one murder per year, and account for 20% of the population but only 4% of the murders. The worst 1% of counties have 19% of the population and 37% of the murders. These (red) counties are generally metropolitan, with long-term Democrat governance and highly restrictive gun laws. That is, criminals get guns, but law-abiding citizens have a very hard time defending themselves.

Finally, when we look at another site Lee uses, everytownresearch.org, we find that Lee neglects a key point we’ve already noted. Crime accounts for most of the rise in gunshot deaths. This is not something that is likely to be changed by trying to adjust the behavior of the law-abiding. And that is what the Left consistently fails to understand.

Concealed carry permit holders are six times less likely than police to misuse their weapons. But gang-bangers in un-policed cities will use their illegal guns frequently, as Chicago and Baltimore prove.

Yes, accidental deaths due to firearms are falling. That’s a good thing. But it has nothing to do with reduced gun ownership. Lawful gun owners are just as concerned with keeping their kids alive as anyone else. They may be more focused on it. That’s why they take their kids shooting and train them in the safe use of guns. We should be doing far more of this.

There has yet to be a gun law that reduced crime. By definition, criminals break the law. But private gun ownership has been proven again and again to be a force for good, with many thousands of lives saved each year. We should be shouting that from the rooftops.

A man believed by authorities to have committed four murders in Northern Nevada was taken into custody on January 19, possibly bringing to an end a killing streak that has worried residents for the last two weeks.

19-year-old Wilbur Ernesto Martinez-Guzman was arrested by Washoe County Sheriff’s department on charges of burglary, possession of stolen property, and immigration law violations. Martinez-Guzman is an illegal alien with a federal hold. The District Attorney’s office plans to file murder charges against him as well, claiming they have sufficient evidence to convict him.

The first killing took place January 9 or 10, 2019. 56-year-old Connie Koontz was found shot to death at her home in the Gardnerville Ranchos. She was found dead by her mother, who also lives in the home and is hard of hearing and disabled.

January 13, 74-year-old Sophia Renken was found dead in her home about a mile away, also shot to death.

January 16, the bodies of 81-year-old Gerald David, a former Reno Rodeo President, and his wife, 80-year-old Sharon David, were found dead in their home on La Guardia Lane in south Reno, near Zolezzi. They also had been shot to death.

My Take

If he is proven guilty, this will be another example of American citizens dying at the hands of an illegal immigrant. How many people have to die before Democrats take the border crisis seriously enough to do something about it?

Related

Mobile police officer Sean Tuder shot and killed in line of duty

A suspect is in custody after the shooting death of Alabama police officer Sean Tuder. The victim was following up on an investigation when the suspect opened fire.

According to Police Chief Lawrence Battiste, Tudor “was doing some follow-up work on an investigation and was gunned down by a suspect” at the Peach Place Inn in West Mobile. The suspect, 19-year-old Marco Perez, has been sought by local police for theft and filing a false police report and by federal law enforcement for probation violations.

Tuder was with the police department for less than five years, and “was really just getting into that part of his career where he started having a really major impact on not just the people in the community, but the men and women who work here in this department,” the police chief said.

Tuder was named “Officer of the Month” in August 2017 and was praised at the time for “his numerous drug arrests, with four cases being sent for federal prosecution, and recovering six firearms.”

My Take

Law enforcement has always been a dangerous job, but it feels as if incidents like these are becoming more commonplace. That’s anecdotal. Perhaps I’m just more sensitive to reports than I was before. Either way, we must support these brave men and women.

Related

As with most Leftist affronts to Liberty, unconstitutional gun confiscation SWATing or so-called ‘Red Flag’ laws are based on a lie. The usual contention is that these laws that eviscerate basic constitutional protections of due process are desperately needed because there are no other means to deal with people who are alleged to be a danger to themselves or others. Our previous article on the subject dealt with this outright falsehood. There are laws and procedures for involuntary civil commitments already on the books to handle these extreme situations. In the case of Florida and the Parkland mass murder, the “The Baker Act” was already in place, but the authorities failed to take action in time. Other states such as Colorado already have procedures in place for Mental Health Holds.

The existence of these laws have been ignored in the effort to ‘enhance’ the government’s ability to confiscate guns. Its just another case of the Left exploiting a tragedy to ‘Rahm’ through new laws to deprive the people of their means of self-defense.

Laws built on lies

Most articles on what is supposedly the urgent need for gun confiscation SWATing or ‘Red Flag’ laws will make vague allusions there are no other ways of handling these situations to the point of asserting that the government has never had the authority to deal with these situations.

State governments clearly have these abilities, but the existing laws protect the Constitutional rights of the accused without having the primary purpose of confiscating guns – an intolerable situation for the authoritarian Left that sees 120 million gun owners as a threat simply because they are gun owners.

Why violate one human right when several can be attacked at once?

Leftists seem to be in some perverse competition to see which one of them can conjure up new laws to attack Liberty in as many ways as possible. For them, it’s a more efficient form of tyranny with one law doing the work of several. What better way to suppress Liberty than to confiscate guns because of someone exercising their right of free speech while destroying due process protections?

The dangerous implications to the 1st Amendment

These laws will have devastating consequences for the natural right of free speech. It will only take one concerned person in the group of people who can initiate these actions to decide an innocent gun owner is guilty of ‘thoughtcrime’ to have their property confiscated. The odds are that the Left will also expand who can initiate these gun confiscation SWATings and streamline the process.

This will only serve to further stigmatize gun owners and suppress their right of free speech. Talk too much about the human right of self-defense and the law-abiding could experience a knock on the door at 5:00 AM with property confiscation conducted at gunpoint. One would then have a protracted legal battle on their hands to prove they are innocent after being treated as guilty with all manner of legal costs and red tape just to have their property returned.

The 2nd Amendment – the primary target

In their ongoing efforts to rid the nation of Liberty, the Left has decided that it should be illegal to defend oneself. Thus they have expended copious amounts of digital ink in demanding the death of the 2nd amendment and the confiscation of guns. They are perfectly willing to do this one innocent gun owner at a time if they have to. Never mind that the common sense human right of self-defense is the bedrock of the Bill or Rights. They have no use for the limitations of their power afforded by the Constitution, much less the Liberty conserving provisions of the Bill of Rights.

But wait, there’s more – The 4th and 5th amendments also on the chopping block

These laws turn the presumption of innocence on its head, forcing the victim of one of these gun confiscation raids to have to prove they aren’t guilty of thoughtcrime before they can get their property returned. Not to mention the ‘ex parte’ nature of these proceedings depriving innocent of the critical right of due process and the right to face one’s accuser before these confiscations take place. Lastly, there is the takings clause applicable to the private property being taken for public use since not many innocent gun owners will have the means for a protracted legal battle with the government, resulting in the loss of private property.

Why the focus on firearms?-

The existing laws for Involuntary Civil Commitment are not only superior in protecting everyone’s civil rights. They also serve to keep people from harm by other means. The unconstitutional practice of gun confiscation SWATing only addresses the issue of guns, leaving the supposed danger to society free to use alternative methods to cause harm.

If safety is the point of the so-called ‘Red Flag’ or ‘ERPO’ laws, then why aren’t their proponents concerned about this issue? If someone has their guns taken away suddenly by unconstitutional means, what’s to stop them from using explosives – flour, etc.- from carrying out their deadly deeds? Suppose an alleged ‘danger to society’ no longer has their guns, but still has a motorized vehicle or the ability to make edged weaponry. What about that circumstance?

Well, if it were really the case in that these people are concerned about other people’s welfare to the point of having them committed, they would have to follow the rule of law and afford the target their right of due process, etc. They wouldn’t be able to take someone’s means of self-defense just on the word of some other aggrieved party. It wouldn’t serve their desire for gun confiscation and gun confiscation alone, so it has no usefulness for them.

Things aren’t going according to plan for the Liberty Grabber Left

The progression for the Left has always been one of control, registration and then confiscation. They used to think that it was just a matter of time before Intergalactic Background Checks would be put in place, then registration would be required – both of which would do nothing to keep people safe or ‘cut down on the carnage’. It was all supposed to happen as it did in the UK and Australia. Intergalactic Background Checks, registration, then confiscation.

But that isn’t happening, despite the baseless polling to the contrary, everyone isn’t clamoring to have the government control their private property. Most of the Pro-Liberty see the danger in this control, with it leading to registration, followed by confiscation. Most on both sides have already admitted that Intergalactic Background Checks don’t work, that the dirty little secret being that these have no other purpose than as a stepping stones to confiscation.

The Takeaway

As others have indicated, Leftists aren’t anti-gun, they are anti-Liberty. They love to see them in the hands of the ‘politically correct’, but cannot deal with them in the hands of the right people.

Leftists desperately want to deprive the Pro-Liberty Right of their guns. These firearms represent a vitally important and final check on unlimited governmental power. It’s the primary bulwark against them attaining government power to attain their wondrous utopia they desire. They are so desperate to remove it that they will confiscate them one innocent person at a time, without a care for its effects on safety or Liberty.